Knowledge and Reasoning
by Minttown1
Summary: Sometimes she wishes for change.


TITLE: Knowledge and Reasoning  
  
AUTHOR: Minttown1/Amber.  
  
RATING: PG.  
  
SPOILERS: None.  
  
SUMMARY: Sometimes she wishes for change.   
  
ARCHIVAL: Just ask.  
  
DISCLAIMER: If they sound familiar, they're not mine. I don't want them anyway. I can't handle the angst.  
  
NOTES: Insomnia works wonders. Thanks to Devanie for encouragement and reassurance.

~*~

Samantha could recall, more than a decade before, lying on a sleeping bag in her best friend's basement. Nearly a dozen other girls were doing the same, tossing uncomfortably in the stifling heat. "I thought basements were supposed to be nice and cool," someone had complained in the dark. The massive amounts of sugar and caffeine that had been consumed over the course of the evening had long since worn off, leaving them exhausted but still unable to sleep.

A voice suggested Truth or Dare, and their hostess narrowed the options to truth, imagining the challenge of navigating in the crowded room. Sam smiled in the dark. Sleepy mouths talked. What better time to try to get to know someone?

~*~

Actually sleeping in the same bed with Jack was a rarity. His chest was slowly rising and falling against her back, and his hand rested on her hip. She allowed her body to slowly relax against his, luxuriating in the contact.

"You're still awake?" he asked, sliding his hand slowly down her leg.

"Yeah." She lay perfectly still, feeling his fingers travel back up her leg, her arm, her shoulder. When he brushed the hair away from her neck, she shivered slightly.

He wrapped his arms around her and whispered, "You're beautiful."

"I'm beautiful because I'm ticklish?"

"You're beautiful because you're Samantha," he corrected.

She stared at the wall opposite the bed, attempting to decide if his comment flattered or annoyed her. Both, maybe, so it seemed best not to address it at all. "Are you ticklish?" she asked.

"Isn't everyone?" he replied, a hint of disappointment in his voice.

She shrugged. Her base of information on the topic was quite small, considering her lack of time with children and her lack of true intimacy with her lovers. Was that bad, she wondered, not to know something so fundamental about a man to whom she had jut made love earlier in the evening? "I feel like I don't know anything about people," she finally murmured.

"Of course you do," he assured her. It's what makes you such a good agent."

"No." She pulled out of his arms and turned to face him. "I mean, individuals. It's like I don't really know anybody."

"It's a lonely job," he began. She shook her head, frustrated.

"I have people in my life, Jack, and plenty of time with them, just not time to talk." She sat up, wrapped in the bed sheet. Why was she doing this when she could have stayed silent and enjoyed his presence, enjoyed him? She wanted more of him tonight, she realized, than what she usually received.

"Well." He hesitated, obviously not sure how much to offer her or how to do so. "Talk," he finally said.

She stared at him in the dim light. Yes, they could talk, but what exactly should she ask him? As much as she wished to know him, trivialities like favorite color or most watched movie bored her. She could hardly ask about his life, though, his daughters or his home. _Talk to me about whatever you used to talk to Marie about,_ she wanted to say. _I want what you had with her before I came around._

"Sam?"

"Never mind." She wanted to smile at him, to defuse the situation, but instead turned her attention back to the wall.

"Hey." He pulled her gently back down to the pillow, wrapping her body in his arms. At moments, he would have liked to give her the world, but the little he was capable of giving had already been pledged to someone else. He offered comfort the only way he really knew how, the only way he had really ever been able to comfort her.

He kissed her. After a moment, she kissed him back.

~*~

Her cheeks burned, and in spite of the heat, she wanted nothing more than to burrow inside her sleeping bag and stay there until her ride came in the morning.

"Bobby?" a voice asked incredulously.

"Yes," Samantha groaned.

"Well," her best friend said, coming to her defense, "it was just that one time, right?"

"Of course." She felt slightly calmer, slightly less embarrassed. "It didn't really mean anything," she tried to explain. "I barely know him."

"Oh," several voices said in unison. Someone in the corner added, "That's okay, then. No big deal."

"Nope," Samantha tried to agree. She turned over onto her stomach then and pretended to sleep. Eventually, she did.

~*~

The alarm clock woke her the following morning. Rolling over to hit the snooze button, she realized that the bed was otherwise empty. A quick scan of the room revealed that his clothes were gone but that a cup of coffee sat on the desk, steam still billowing above it. She had just missed him, and it was undoubtedly intentional on his part.

She tentatively sipped the coffee and sighed. He had no idea how she fixed her coffee in the morning, yet they had just spent another night together. It was consoling in a way to think that maybe Jack did not know this particular fact about his wife, either, but that thought really made her question why she wanted to be with him. Whether he knew and loved someone else in a way that he never would her or he was just incapable of feeling that way for anyone, she had no reason to be with him.

In fact, they had reasons to not be together, at least three just on his end. "You know how to pick them, Spade," she said to the mirror on the closet door. Sometimes it seemed that fate was preventing her from ever finding someone to make her happy. In reality, though, she knew the only one preventing her happiness was herself.

The weatherman on the radio invited her to welcome another fine day. Frustrated at the same tired routine, she decided in the end to drink the coffee Jack had prepared before leaving. She left her cup in the sink next to his, traced his footsteps out the door. Eventually, her car was parked beside his, and she began another day of pretending there had been no night.

~*~

The following Monday, Samantha was approached in the school hallway by another of her friend's guests. Her puffy face and messy hair suggested that the weekend had taken even more of a toll on her than it had on Samantha.

"Can I ask you something?" The girl was timid, awkward. Samantha wondered briefly if she had seen her somewhere before.

"Um, sure."

"Saturday night, when you said about Bobby... You meant Bobby Johansen, didn't you?"

Samantha nodded, suddenly feeling uneasy.

As timid as the girl seemed, she asked without hesitation, "When?"

"Last October, after the game." She was unaccustomed to revealing such details, but she saw no reason to lie.

"Yeah. I sort of knew. He acted so strange."

Samantha looked up sharply. "Oh. You mean..." Neither wanted to say what both had realized. "I'm sorry," she finally offered.

"Hey, no problem," the other girl replied, her eyes never leaving her shoes. "It's not like you knew, right?"

"Right." It was not exactly a lie. She had had no idea that Bobby was dating this particular girl.

The bell rang, and they parted without another word. Maybe some things were better unknown.

~*~

"Get everything on the table," Jack was saying when she walked into his office. The others were arranging papers and pointing out details to one another. "We'll look at what we have, everything we have, and we'll figure it out from there."

This was all standard procedure, so much so that she had never really thought about it. She took a chair near to his desk and listened as Jack outlined the case for the team. Leaning back, a small point dug into her back. Her eyes never leaving the chart Jack was showing them, she reached behind her for the source of the discomfort. A picture frame, she realized. She had never really looked at his family, and now was hardly the time to stare at any photograph not related to the task at hand, but her curiosity overwhelmed her.

The papers in her lap hid the picture from the others, and she studied it with a professional scrutiny. Two parents, older than average, and two children, both girls. Everyone looked fairly happy, arms looped around one another, faces close together and smiling. It had been taken a few years before. The holiday banner in the background would have made that apparent even if she did not know Jack's face so well.

She stared back up at him, chastising herself for missing part of his briefing. Even as she struggled to focus, knowing how important her work was, it was impossible not to notice how unhappy he now looked. She wanted the unhappiness to have come before her, for whatever they had to have been a help to him and not a burden. The unhappiness had been caused by the affair, though, at least mostly. What had caused the affair, then?

Recalling the photograph, watching Jack's face, staring at her own hands folded on her knees, nothing revealed the answer. Maybe it was better not to figure it out, she decided when no answer became apparent. Reasons and motivations were only useful when they pointed to an outcome or a solution, and it was obvious from the start that this would eventually stop once Jack pulled himself together again. It could only do her harm to dwell on the beginning when the end was already approaching.

"You ready?" Danny asked her as the group began to disperse.

"Yes," she answered, and for the moment she was.


End file.
